“And what are the Germans doing in Vera Cruz?” the president asked.
March grinned. “They appear to be packing up. Vera Cruz is useless to them.”
“As is Mexico,” Hughes injected.
“Agreed,” said Lansing. “And here is what we will do. First, we will continue to reinforce and resupply Pershing. His army must become strong enough to repel any Mexican attacks. Tell him he may probe aggressively, but I do not want the army risked farther south. He may also probe from El Paso and Brownsville. Hopefully, this will frighten Obregon into thinking that we might annex northern Mexico and motivate him to the peace table.”
“And if it doesn’t?” March asked.
“Then we will annex northern Mexico,” Lansing said.
A few more comments and General March departed, leaving Hughes and Lansing alone. “Tell me, Charles, what are the British up to? Will they ever come in on our side?”
Hughes sighed. “I wonder. I’ve been in contact with Winston Churchill and he is of the opinion that the Royal Navy lusts after war with Germany, but that the British Army isn’t quite ready.”
“The British Army may never be ready,” Lansing muttered. “It is far too small and there’s no interest in enlarging it except for defensive purposes. They see Germany across the Channel and they are rightfully concerned, but worry about us and go to war for us? Never.”
Lansing sighed. “A naval confrontation between Great Britain and Imperial Germany, with us aiding the British, is a marvelous vision.”
“I’ve heard it said that the Germans have warned the British in their part of Puget Sound not to try and exit the Sound either at night or without forewarning the Germans. I understand the British are contemptuous of such requests.”
“Charles, are you saying an incident might occur?”
Hughes smiled. “One can only hope so.”
Even though he was only thirty-five, the younger guards had begun calling Pedro Sanchez “grandfather.” Of course, most of them were so much younger than he, mere children in their mid teens. What the hell was the Mexican Army coming to, he wondered, if it enlisted children who were barely out of diapers?
As to his position as a guard at the camp in southern California, he had only himself to blame. He had supported Carranza, supported the changes needed to be made in the way Mexicans lived, and, worse, had believed in Carranza’s promises. He now realized that Carranza never had any intention of keeping those high-sounding promises.
Now he was hundreds of miles away from his home in a village that was south of Ciudad Juarez, which was just across the border from the American city of El Paso. Worse, as rumors spun out of control, he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever see it or his family again. At first, joining the army had seemed like a lark. He’d never been more than a few miles away from his home and he’d wanted to see a little of the rest of the world before he died. He’d been to Monterrey, but that was it. Now he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. Staring at a couple of hundred sullen and half-starved American prisoners was nobody’s idea of seeing the world.
San Diego and the ocean were only a few days march away, but he was convinced he’d see them when he was in heaven and looking down. Even more annoying were the Germans. Their arrogance was beyond belief. Did they think he was an animal? A slave? He spat on the ground. To hell with Carranza and the Germans he’d invited in to help rule Mexico.
Because of his age and apparent maturity, Captain Torres had grandly proclaimed that Pedro was the senior sergeant in the overlarge platoon sent to help guard the Americans. Thus, the men in his platoon, his children, often came to him for advice. Rumors were spinning out of control and the men were worried. Well, so was Sergeant Pedro Sanchez.
He’d tried to ask Captain Torres, but that man was too busy either stealing German supplies or screwing a Mexican whore in Raleigh to bother. Still, Pedro had figured out that all was not well with Mexico’s campaign to drive the Americans out of Texas. He thanked his lucky stars and the Virgin Mary, whichever worked best, that he was not involved in the bloody fighting in Texas.
Communications between Mexico City, Texas, and California were miserable at best and nobody thought to inform the illiterate creatures who were the enlisted men. Captain Torres was the worst. When asked, he’d caustically told Sanchez and the others to do their duty and let officers like him do the thinking.
His only source of possibly accurate information was the Mexican woman who was the mistress of the pig of an American who worked with the Germans. Sanchez despised traitors and Olson had betrayed his country.
Martina Flores had confirmed the bloody defeat of the Mexican Army in Texas and had then given him several pieces of additional bad news.
First, she said that Carranza was dead. If that was really true, and Martina’s source was a good one, then who did he owe his allegiance to? Obregon? How about to himself, he was thinking.
Second, and most horribly, the Americans were in Monterrey. His family had fled to Monterrey. He didn’t think they’d be molesting his wife. She was grossly overweight, bad tempered, and had few of her teeth left, all of which had influenced his decision to enlist. However, he had a daughter who was fourteen and ripening into a beauty. He became coldly angry at the thought of Americans touching her pale skin and frustrated because he was so far away that he could not protect his little angel.
The third thing that Martina told him, had shocked him to the depths of his soul. If the Germans pulled out, his men were supposed to kill the American prisoners. Mother of God, he could not do that. He supposed he could kill in battle, or in self-defense, or to protect his daughter’s fragile virtue, but he could not massacre the Americans who had done nothing to him. Some of them had been quite pleasant, even friendly, and he’d been surprised that so many spoke his language. Murder them? But what would he do if either Torres or the German, Steiner, ordered him to? Or what would he do if the Germans began to massacre the Americans? He dimly recalled the now discredited parish priest once telling him that people who do nothing in the face of evil are sinners as guilty as those who actually commit the act. If he did nothing, he concluded, he would go to Hell.
Mother of God, he repeated, what had he done to get into this mess? Not counting his drunken ass of a captain, Pedro Sanchez had forty men looking to him for guidance and leadership and all he wanted to do was go home. Mother of God.
Pedro Sanchez worried about his future.
Luke heard the drone of distant engines and looked into the cloudless sky. He assumed it was another visit from German fighters. German Albatros D-III fighters were common as they photographed the American fortifications or occasionally strafed an exposed position. American machine guns, mounted on trucks with their barrels elevated, functioned as antiaircraft guns and their accuracy was getting better as they got more practice. Several Albatroses had been shot from the sky and others had been sent running back to German lines with smoke streaming from their engines.
But this sound was deeper, more ominous. Luke shielded his eyes and stared to the south. Bombers. The Gothas had risen from the dead. Escorted by a swarm of fighters, a dozen of the monsters flew in at heights well above the antiaircraft guns. Once again, the American Army was impotent to stop the Germans.
Still, the American gunners opened fire and Luke watched as the tracers arched skyward and then fell back to earth. An Albatros fighter peeled off from his escort position and followed the tracers down to the offending gun. Bullets shredded the truck and the gunners and the victorious German pilot flew off. Luke could only shake his head. The American gunners had forgotten a basic fact: tracers traced both ways.